Las Américas International Airport

Las Américas International Airport is the principal international gateway to Santo Domingo, capital of the Dominican Republic, and one of the busiest airports in the Caribbean by international passenger volume. Located 14 mi (22 km) east of downtown Santo Domingo at 59 ft (18 m) elevation on the southern coast near Boca Chica, SDQ serves the roughly 3.5M residents of the Santo Domingo metropolitan area and the surrounding provinces of the eastern Dominican Republic, handling 97 routes across 59 destinations through 34 airlines. The airport is named for the Americas broadly and was the site of the 1965 U.S. military intervention landing. SDQ is the principal Dominican hub for Arajet (the country's first successful low-cost long-haul carrier, launched in 2022 with a Boeing 737 MAX fleet serving Mexico, Central America, South America, and the Caribbean) and a base for Sky Cana, Red Air (before its cessation), and regional charter operators. U.S. carriers provide the backbone of international service: American, Delta, United, JetBlue, Spirit, Frontier, and Southwest (from its southeastern U.S. network) all operate daily or regular flights, along with Air Canada, WestJet, Avianca, Copa, Aeroméxico, Volaris, Viva Aerobus, Iberia, Air Europa, Plus Ultra, Air France, Lufthansa, Edelweiss, and multiple Caribbean carriers including InterCaribbean, Bahamasair, and LIAT. The DR's unusually large Dominican-American diaspora concentrated in New York, Boston, and Miami drives substantial year-round ethnic visiting-friends-and-relatives traffic alongside tourist demand. The airfield has two asphalt runways — 17/35 at 11,000 ft (3,353 m) as the primary and 18/36 at 9,813 ft (2,991 m) as secondary — both capable of widebody operations. Two connected passenger terminals (one for international and one for domestic plus some international traffic) handle all commercial movements. SDQ is operated by the French-Dominican consortium Aerodom under a concession that also includes five other Dominican airports, and the concession has driven infrastructure modernization since the late 1990s. Despite the concurrent rise of Punta Cana (PUJ) as the country's largest tourist airport, SDQ remains the principal gateway for business travel, Dominican residents, and non-all-inclusive leisure traffic to the capital and the south coast.